In this episode of Behind The Hustle, hosts Brett and Zach discuss how the COVID‑19 pandemic exposed and intensified supply‑chain fragility in remote American towns, focusing on Gustavus, Alaska, a community of about 400 people that relies on a single grocery store. The town historically faced extreme logistical challenges—no electricity until 1985, no cell service until the mid‑1990s, and access only by plane or boat. When the regular ferry service was halted due to state budget cuts, the town’s sole grocer, Lane Parker, bought a $200,000 barge and began weekly 6.5‑hour trips to Juneau’s small Costco, hauling $20,000 worth of groceries, lumber, and concrete to keep the community supplied. The hosts trace Parker’s family roots back to 1917, illustrate how the lack of efficient logistics inflated milk prices to $12 per gallon, and explain how Parker’s barge reduced costs. They then broaden the conversation, citing research from Kansas State University, to warn that many rural U.S. towns with a single, often aging, grocery store face similar vulnerabilities. With freight carriers bypassing small markets and pandemic lockdowns limiting travel, these communities risk losing essential food access unless they develop local solutions or alternative supply chains.
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In many remote Alaskan towns, this is just ordinary life.
Zach, welcome back.
Hey, how you doing, Brett?
Pretty good. So you've got a story this week that, um, sounds like it's gonna be pretty awesome. You, um, found this small town in Alaska, and this is a place that was already pretty remote and cut off from civilization. And now even more so. Tell us a little bit what you've learned here.
Yeah, so, you know, almost everyone in the lower 48 states has had some kind of run-in with a supply chain issue at this point, whether it's, you know, you go to the store and you can't find eggs, you can't find milk. In many remote Alaskan towns, this is just ordinary life. So I was curious to look at a place where the supply chain is so ordinarily complicated that any extra wrench you throw into the equation is almost devastating. And there are some people finding really intuitive workarounds to these issues. This little town that we chose to look at, Gustavus, Alaska, population 400. It's a place where there was no electricity until 1985, no cell phones until the mid-'90s, or, you know, no Many people didn't have a landline until the mid-'90s. Last night I joined a town hall meeting by telephone, and there were 5 people on the call. And that was considered a monumental turnout for the town. That's a quorum, I guess. Yeah. This town usually gets its, there's one grocery store in town, and typically they'll get their groceries by ferry. You can't get to this town by automobile. The only way you can get there is by plane or airplane, or by plane or boat. So for instance, if you wanted to get there from San Francisco, you would fly to Seattle, you'd fly to Juneau, Alaska, And then you'd take a little seaplane from, maybe a 6-seater seaplane from Juneau to Gustavus. Problem is that a few months ago that ferry went out of commission. The state had a bunch of budget cuts. The town is almost entirely dependent on tourism revenue. So a lot of things just hit the fan at the same time. And this grocery store owner had to find a new way to to supply his town with not only groceries, but rations, supplies. The local businesses also depended on him to bring over things like lumber and concrete. So he bought his own barge, a $200,000 ship, and started making trips 6.5 hours one way between Gustavus and Juneau, Alaska. To the Costco there, which is actually the smallest Costco in the United States, and bought $20,000 worth of stuff at a time. And he's doing these shipments once a week and basically fueling his entire town on those trips.
So not every town has such an altruistic person who's willing to put the town on his back and shoulder that sort of burden. But this is just not some ordinary good citizen. This is somebody who has pretty deep roots in this place, and you were telling me a little bit about his, was it his grandfather? Can you describe this little backstory? I thought that was fascinating.
Yeah, so his family goes way back in this town to 1917. His great-grandfather's name was Abraham Lincoln Parker. His father's name is Lee Parker, and his name is Lane Parker. Comes from a long lineage of Gustavus descendants, and like many people in the town, his family probably went up there to seek a kind of a remote lifestyle. It's a very beautiful place. It's right next to Glacier Bay National Park, which is just a tremendous place. But that remoteness and isolation sometimes comes with a cost. You're at the very end of the supply chain. Before he started his store there, a gallon of milk in Gustavus was $12. So, you know, you'd buy it, you'd get it in Seattle, the shipping company would get it in Seattle for like $3, then they'd have to like load it onto the barge, they'd have to ship it, on this ridiculous journey across the ocean, and all costs considered, by the time it got there, the markup would be like $7, $8. So this guy basically found a more efficient way to minimize those logistics and reduce the costs a little bit on those goods. So Abraham Lincoln Parker would probably be proud.
I'm sure. Well, the other thing that interests me here is this is not just about one remote town in a remote place, but it's really more a story about the supply chain problems that many towns in rural America are going to start to face as this pandemic stretches out beyond the coverage areas. Like a lot of people, what we're reading in the pages of lots of newspapers and magazines. So there was somebody you talked to at, was it Kansas State University, who sort of shed light on some of the effect that we're going to see in rural towns. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, this is like kind of an extreme example of a remote or rural town, this place in Alaska, but there are plenty of towns, small municipalities in the United States, like in places like Kansas, where there's one grocery store in town. And in a lot of these places, a lot of these places are so small that it doesn't even make sense for a Walmart or a dollar store to come encroach on the business. There. So the grocery store is on its own. And a lot of these owners are very old. They've been in the town for a long time. They're kind of a town fixture. And when they retire, they have trouble having someone to fill their shoes, finding someone to fill their shoes. So a lot of these grocery stores close. People are in a situation where they have to commute 30 or 40 minutes to the next town or the next grocery store over to get their stuff. And especially with COVID-19 right now, when people are sheltered in place, that's not a possibility for a lot of people. Aside from that, you know, the population who doesn't have access to cars or who isn't mobile for any reason. So it's a big issue. We could see coronavirus having a pretty devastating impact on rural towns with a single grocery store like this. And even big shipping logistics companies, freight companies will sometimes bypass these towns because it doesn't really make sense to stop there. So these towns are having to find ways to rely on local economies and farmers, ranchers, things like that to fill the void, but sometimes even that's not enough. So, in tandem with coronavirus, we're seeing this great ongoing decline of rural grocery stores that many people are trying to find a solution to.
It's fascinating. Well, more on Sunday. Definitely open Zach's email, and if you have stories of supply chain disruptions, you want to share, then send them to Holler at the Hustle, and we'll definitely take a look because we're continuing to find these stories interesting and want to continue to cover those undiscovered stories for you. All right, thanks for joining us, Zach, and everybody, open your email on Sunday for more. Take care, everyone.
